Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #148 - 150 Days Ago

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #148 - 150 Days Ago

Hi Mom, This one's not going to be well structured, and I am not going to try to impose structure. I am just letting it all fly. Streaming.

So, it's been 150 days since you died. I am only aware of this because I am doing this blog and as a weird, OCD compunction, I am counting the days.

So, that's 15 sets of ten days or ten sets of 15 days, which is basically 10 pairs of weeks or 20 weeks. I had thought of acknowledging the 144th day since your death, Mom, as that's twelve squared, and I am doing a lot of math with squares and square roots, so I notice such things.

20 weeks was the length of two quarters at K College but just about 25% over the length of a WMU semester. It's also basically five months - five sets of 30 days.

Earlier today, I said I missed you out loud, and I still felt the loss pretty hard and strong. I could probably do this every day, tell you I miss you, and the loss would always be there. I am going to have to keep figuring out how to live with the loss. Because the next looming milestone will be 200 days, which is over half of a year. Should I pause on day 182 or 183 (depending on how one rounds numbers) to reflect that it has been exactly half of a year? Now that I have done that calculation, I probably will.

But I do not wish to seem self-pitying. I do not wish to seem as if I am wallowing in grief. Life goes on. Life has gone on. In fact, this blog is meant to be about life going on. I am continuing those daily conversations with you, which talks about my life, which now also includes my experience with grief and with losing you.

Losing you but not losing you. You are no longer alive, no longer here physically, but I sense you often. I hear you speak to me. I feel your presence. I feel you watching over me. I feel your love, your pride, your approval (and occasional disapproval). I believe in spirituality.

And yet, I am also skeptical enough to know that these feelings could all be rooted in my psyche, could be my psyche's way of coping with the loss of you. It's just my mind playing tricks. There are no spirits. I do not really feel your presence. I just want to so badly that my psyche makes it happen. I want to believe in more, but I am also rational enough to know that there may not be more.

But I don't really like that theory. And one thing your death has taught me is that faith is all about believing in a thing when I have no rational and epistemological proof for it.

I see one of the dangers of writing this blog is that I will be seen as "grief boy," even if the majority of my posts are about living life and NOT about wallowing in grief. Simply because I am writing TO YOU, Mom, I can be accused of not moving on, not getting over your death (not that I think we can ever get over a loss like this one, you didn't get over the loss of your Mother, ever, Mom). I try not to mention or reference your death all the time out in the world, Mom. Though I did just recently share with my work supervisor that my obvious surliness brought on by stress is an ongoing by-product of how your death has affected my work and my life since July. And then, my good friend Walt Curley shares with me about his struggles on the four year anniversary of his mother's death, for the entire month of the month in which she died. So, I expect that this designation of "grief boy" is not something that I will easily shed, and I may not ever shed it.

Even though this blog feature (because eventually there will be non-Hey Mom content on this blog) is supposed to be about moving on, it's also meant to be a reflection on grief and loss at least some of the time. After all, I am trying to figure out how to grieve, to figure out my grief process, to find a way to keep living and to accept that you are gone. I find this last part still very difficult even after 150 days. I continue to think that this is a bad dream from which I will wake and the world be restored to the way it should be, Mom, with you in it.

I miss so many things that are part of having you here in a physical and living way, like kisses and hugs and just you as a living and breathing human being. I doubt I will ever stop thinking about that loss of that physical presence, though maybe I will stop thinking about it every day, at least at some point.

This feels finished enough.

I miss you, Mom.

I don't know if you have noticed this, Mom, but when I have to back date these posts, IE. publish backwards in time, I always pick the time of your last breath: 10:10 a.m. Blogger is positioned in Pacific time, so I actually have to select 7:10 a.m. so it works out right.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 150 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1512.02 - 10:10
and again 1512.04 - 8:30